On 19 October 1931, David John Moore Cornwell was born to Ronald Thomas Archibald (Ronnie) Cornwell (1906–75) and Olive (Glassy) Cornwell, in Poole, Dorset, England. He was the second son to the marriage, the first being Tony, two years his elder, now a retired advertising executive. His younger half-sister is the actress Charlotte Cornwell. Rupert Cornwell, a former The Independent newspaper Washington bureau-chief, is a younger half-brother.[2][3] Le Carré said he did not know his mother, who abandoned him when he was five years old, until their re-acquaintance when he was 21 years old.[4] His relationship with his father was difficult – given that the man had been jailed for insurance fraud, was an associate of the Kray twins[4] (among the foremost criminals in London) and was continually in debt. A biographer reports,

"His father, Ronnie, made and lost his fortune a number of times due to elaborate confidence tricks and schemes which landed him in prison on at least one occasion. This was one of the factors that led to le Carré's fascination with secrets."[5]

The character "Rick Pym", the scheming con-man father of protagonist 'Magnus Pym' in his later novel A Perfect Spy (1986), was based on Ronnie. When his father died in 1975, le Carré paid for a memorial funeral service, but did not attend.[4]

When, in 1954, his father declared bankruptcy, Cornwell quit Oxford to teach at a boys' preparatory school; however, a year later he returned to Oxford, and graduated in 1956 with a (First Class Honours) Bachelor of Arts degree. He then taught French and German at Eton College for two years, becoming an MI5 officer in 1958. He ran agents, conducted interrogations, tapped telephone lines and effected break-ins.[7] Encouraged by Lord Clanmorris (who wrote crime novels as "John Bingham"), and whilst being an active MI5 officer, Cornwell began writing his first novel Call for the Dead (1961). Cornwell has identified Lord Clanmorris as one of two models for George Smiley, the spymaster of the Circus, the other being Vivian H. H. Green.[8] As a schoolboy, Cornwell had first met Green when he was the Chaplain and Assistant Master at Sherborne School (1942–51). The friendship continued after Green's move to Lincoln College, where he tutored Cornwell.[9]

In 1960, Cornwell transferred to MI6, the foreign-intelligence service, and worked under 'Second Secretary' cover in the British Embassy at Bonn; he later was transferred to Hamburg as a political consul. There, he wrote the detective storyA Murder of Quality (1962) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), as "John le Carré" (le Carré is French for "the Square"[7]) – a pseudonym required because Foreign Office officers were forbidden to publish in their own names. Cornwell left the service in 1964 to work full-time as a novelist, his intelligence-officer career at an end as the result of the betrayal of British agents' covers to the KGB by Kim Philby, the infamous British double agent (one of the Cambridge Five).[6][10] Le Carré depicts and analyses Philby as the upper-class traitor, code-named "Gerald" by the KGB, the mole George Smiley hunts in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974).[11][12] Credited by his pen name, Cornwell appears as an extra in the 2011 film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, among the guests at the Christmas party seen in several flashback scenes.

In 1964, le Carré won the Somerset Maugham Award (established to enable British writers younger than 35 to enrich their writing by spending time abroad).

In 1954, Cornwell married Alison Ann Veronica Sharp; they had three sons—Simon, Stephen and Timothy—and divorced in 1971.[13] In 1972, Cornwell married Valérie Jane Eustace, a book editor with Hodder & Stoughton;[14] they have one son, Nicholas, who writes as Nick Harkaway.[15]

Most of le Carré's novels are spy stories set in the Cold War (1945–91) and feature Circus agents—unheroic political functionaries aware of the moral ambiguity of their work and engaged in psychological more than physical drama.[20] Le Carré's books emphasise the fallibility of Western democracy and of the secret services protecting it, often implying the possibility of East-West moral equivalence.[20] Moreover, they experience little of the violence typically encountered in action thrillers and have very little recourse to gadgets. Much of the conflict is internal, rather than external and visible.[20]

A departure from the use of East–West conflict as a backdrop in this era is the spy novel The Little Drummer Girl (1983), which is set against the Israel–Palestine conflict.

A Perfect Spy (1986), which chronicles the boyhood moral education of Magnus Pym and how it leads to his becoming a spy, is the author's most autobiographical espionage novel, reflecting the boy's very close relationship with his con man father. Biographer Lynndianne Beene describes the novelist's own father, Richard Cornwell, as "an epic con man of little education, immense charm, extravagant tastes, but no social values"; le Carré reflected that "writing A Perfect Spy is probably what a very wise shrink would have advised".[citation needed]

With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, le Carré's writing shifted to portrayal of the new multilateral world. For example, The Night Manager (1993), his first completely post-Cold-War novel, deals with drug and arms smuggling in the murky world of Latin America drug lords, shady Caribbean banking entities, and western officials who look the other way.

As a journalist, le Carré wrote The Unbearable Peace (1991), a non-fiction account of Brigadier Jean-Louis Jeanmaire (1911–92), the Swiss Army officer who spied for the USSR from 1962 until 1975.[21]

In 2009, he donated the short story "The King Who Never Spoke" to the Oxfam "Ox-Tales" project, which included it in the project's Fire volume.[22]

In a TV interview with Jon Snow of Channel 4 News, Le Carré remarked on his own writing style that, since the facts that inform his work were widely known, he felt it was his job to put them into a context that made them believable to the reader.[23][when?]

In an interview broadcast in October 2008 on BBC Four, Mark Lawson asked him to name a Best of le Carré list of books; the novelist answered: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Tailor of Panama and The Constant Gardener.[citation needed][29]

In September 2010, le Carré was interviewed on Channel 4 News by journalist Jon Snow at his house in Cornwall. The conversation involved several topics: his writing career generally and processes adopted for writing (specifically about his latest book, Our Kind of Traitor, involving Russia and its current global influences – financially and politically); his SIS career, discussing why – both personally and more generally – one did such a job then, as compared to now; and how the earlier fight against communism had now moved to the hugely negative effects of certain aspects of excessive capitalism. During the interview he said that it would be his last UK television interview. While reticent as to his exact reasons, those he was willing to cite were that of slight self-loathing (which he considered most people feel), along with a distaste for showing off (he felt that writing necessarily involved a lot of this anyway) and an unwillingness to breach what he felt was the necessarily solitary nature of the writer's work. He was also wary of wasting writing time and dissipating his talent in social success, having seen this happen to many talented writers, to what he felt was the detriment of their later work.[30]

A week after this appearance, le Carré was interviewed for the TV show Democracy Now! in the US. He told interviewer Amy Goodman "This is the last book about which I intend to give interviews. That isn’t because I’m in any sense retiring. I’ve found that, actually, I’ve said everything I really want to say, outside my books. I would just like—I’m in wonderful shape. I’m entering my eightieth year. I just want to devote myself entirely to writing and not to this particular art form of conversation."[31][32] In December 2010 Channel 4 broadcast John Le Carre: A Life Unmasked, described as "his most candid television interview".[33]

The Quest for Karla (1982) (containing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People) (republished in 1995 as Smiley Versus Karla in the UK; and John Le Carré: Three Complete Novels in the U.S.) ISBN 0-394-52848-4

The Complete Smiley (2009–2010 on BBC Radio 4), an eight-part radio-play series, based upon the novels featuring George Smiley, that commenced broadcast on 23 May 2009, beginning with Call for the Dead, with Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley, and concluding with The Secret Pilgrim, in June 2010[38]

In 2010, le Carré donated his literary archive to the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The initial 85 boxes of material deposited included handwritten drafts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Constant Gardener. The library hosted a public display of these and other items to mark World Book Day in March 2011.[41][42]

Hindersmann, Jost (2005). "The right side lost, but the wrong side won: John le Carré's Spy Novels before and after the End of the Cold War". Clues: A Journal of Detection. 23 (4): 25–37. doi:10.3200/CLUS.23.4.25-37. ISSN0742-4248.

le Carré, John (April 15, 2013). "The Spy Who Liked Me; on the set with Richard Burton and Martin Ritt". The New Yorker. pp. 28–32. (contains a 1965 photograph of actor Richard Burton and author John le Carré sitting together on the movie set of "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold")

Monaghan, David. Smiley's Circus: A guide to the Secret World of John le Carre. Orbis Book Publishing. ISBN0-85613-916-5.